kiddos!

So it's only been a week, but HOW CUTE are the babies and kiddos in clinic?? They tug on your ID badge, giggle when you palpate their soft little bellies, pull on your stethoscope, ask all kinds of funny questions... and uh, cry and scream when you do an otoscopic exam. Which, conveniently, saves me the trouble of having to use a tongue depressor to get a great look at their throats. 5 minutes later, they've forgotten all about it and they love you again. One little girl even shyly told me she thought I was beautiful. Cutest kid-with-diarrhea ever. All together now: awwwwww.

Even the parents are cute: while waiting for me to see his toddler, one dad was told in triage to give her a few sips of Gatorade every 10-15 minutes, since she would vomit anything else immediately. It was just a standard PO challenge, but at first I was wondering why he kept looking nervously at his watch during my exam... until he politely interrupted me to say it had been exactly 10 minutes and it was time for her to sip some Gatorade. It happened again 10 minutes later, at which point the the cuteness nearly made me laugh aloud. I know, it's not my kid, and I'll probably be just as neurotic one day.

Okay I'm going a little soft here. Maybe I'll change my mind when I come down with viral gastro after having seen multiple cases of it this week in clinic. Or when I get vomited and/or peed on, which thankfully hasn't happened yet. Better yet, it's good to remember that cute kids turn into awkward adolescents, what with the surly attitudes and acne and the obligatory STD/"risky behavior" talk. Puberty is not a pleasant thing; I'm hoping to grow out of it any day now.